Royal Harlot (4 page)

This was brash talk for green virgins of a scant fifteen years, I know, but common enough in our Royalist society. We all had too much time with too little to occupy us, our shabby futures stretching endlessly before us without purpose. England’s leader was the Lord Protector, a man we’d been taught to hate as our enemy and regard as our inferior. To mock Cromwell’s Puritan ways was perceived as a way of supporting our exiled king, a kind of perverse loyalty, as well as a ready excuse for the most outrageous behavior. How could any mother’s warnings counter that?

Now I glanced back at my friend. “Tell me true, Anne. Is Lord Chesterfield so dangerous that you yourself would turn away if he smiled upon you?”

But Anne only sighed, then laughed behind her fingers, as if this were the most preposterous question imaginable. “If Lord Chesterfield would smile upon me, Barbara, then I would melt like warm butter at his feet.”

“Warm butter, hah,” I scoffed, knowing our game. “If he but smiled at
me,
why, I’d freeze him with an icy glance, and make him come beg me for more.”

“You would not.” Anne’s eyes fair popped from her head. “Not with him, you wouldn’t.”

“Watch me, then,” I said, and furled my fan against my palm. I’d heard it said once that my cousin George could draw every eye in a room toward him, simply by the power of the Villiers charm alone. Since then I’d aspired to the same effect, and practiced before the looking-glass whenever I was alone. Now this would be my test, and with a formidable foe, too.

I raised my chin and let my shoulders soften, and composed my features into an expression that I hoped was mysterious yet seductive. Contriving some errand in the next room, I set my course across the chamber near the cluster of men, giving my skirts an extra twitch as I glided past Lord Chesterfield.

“What goddess is this, to venture so near to mortal earth?” He turned to face me, his expression one of frank admiration. “Tell me your name, fair one, so I might worship you properly.”

“If I were to make my name so common, then how should I remain a deity?” I paused, and parried, striving to mimic the same elegant banter of the older ladies. “How could I keep from being sullied by that same mortal soil?”

“What if I were to kneel before the altar of your beauty?” he countered, sweeping his hand before him to indicate where he’d kneel, right there on the well-swept mortal soil of Lady Walthrop’s parlor floor. “Would that be worshipful enough to earn the honor of my goddess’s name?”

Behind him one of the other men sniggered. “It’s Barbara Villiers, Chesterfield.”

“Miss Villiers, then.” Recognition lit his eyes, as almost always happened when others heard my family’s name. “I’m honored, dear Goddess Villiers.”

I tipped my head a fraction in cool acknowledgment, though my cheeks grew hot against my will. No doubt he’d lay the fault for his jilt at my cousin’s door; what if he shared me in that blame?

“What, so chill a greeting, my sweet deity?” he asked, taking a step closer to me. “No warmth to spare for me, your humble supplicant?”

I granted him the hint of a smile, though in truth I found him even more pleasing at this range than from afar. How much more manly he was than the callow youths who’d tried to court me!

“No more acknowledgment for my devotions, my goddess?” he asked, and pressed his hand over his heart, a practiced gesture, but one that in my youth still thrilled me.

“Worship should be its own reward, my lord,” I said with what I hoped was airy disdain. “A faithful follower expects nothing more.”

“But the most faithful of worshippers expects to be rewarded.” Before I’d realized it, he’d hooked his arm into mine with the audacity of a privateer with a new-captured prize, and was leading me away to his port. “Come with me, Goddess Villiers, and let me sing a paean or two to your ears alone.”

His boldness startled me. It was one thing to play this game before others, but I worried that my novice’s skills would not be equal to his if we were alone. Yet I was likewise too flattered by his attentions to refuse him entirely, and thus I made myself smile, as if such suggestions were commonplace to me.

“To Lady Walthrop’s gallery, then,” I said, pointing with my fan. “There, and no farther.”

He didn’t wait, but swept me away, and my last glimpse of my friend Anne’s face showed amazement, and envy, too, that I’d succeeded in beguiling such a gentleman on her challenge.

The gallery ran across the front of the house, with windows full of moonlight down one side and along the other old portraits of grim-faced ancestors deemed too ugly and out of fashion to display anywhere else in the house. These, then, would be my guardians, such as they were, and yet as I gazed up at Lord Chesterfield beside me, I did not doubt or falter.

“You’re new to London, aren’t you, my goddess?” he asked, stopping beneath one of the portraits, a cross-eyed fellow with a beard as pointed as a Jesuit’s. “I would have known you otherwise.”

“I’m not so new as that,” I said, unwilling to paint my youth quite so openly. Most gentlemen believed me older than my years, and I hoped Lord Chesterfield did as well. “Rather it’s you who’s new returned to England.”

“Ah, a clairvoyant goddess,” he said, and laughed, displaying his fine, even teeth by the moonlight. “Yes, my affairs did take me away from England for a time, but then I was also able to meet with His Majesty in Brussels, and reassure him of my loyalty.”

“His Majesty!” I exclaimed, recalling at once the engraving of the handsome young sovereign that hung in my mother’s bedchamber. “What is he like? How does he fare so far from home?”

Chesterfield’s face turned solemn. “His situation is very grave, and most reduced, and enough to break the hearts of those still loyal to the crown. His Majesty’s clothes are shabby and lacking, as are those of his attendants, and he is entirely dependent on the gifts and kindness of others for his very food. They say he’s so low that he can dine each noon upon but a single dish, and only one of meat every seven-day at that.”

“How dreadful!” I cried, and quickly looked down at His Lordship’s fine dress. “Were you able to give him comfort, my lord, a gift, however slight, to ease his distress?”

“Alas, my pockets were near as empty as his,” he said with a fine show of sorrow. “I’d hoped, of course, that I’d soon be able to make a better offering, but those prospects were dashed.”

“Your wedding,” I said, assuming a measure of remorse for my cousin’s theft of his bride. “I’m most sorry for that, my lord. To lose your beloved to another so close to the wedding—”

“What was beloved was not the lady but her estate,” he said with surprising frankness. “Because her father’s General Fairfax, Cromwell’s hero at Naseby, she would bring connections beyond measure, as well as having my lands restored to me. For that I was willing to take her plain muffin of a face, but she tossed me over for your cousin.”

“I’m sorry, my lord,” I said again, for lack of anything else. “I’m sorry.”

“Why should you be, my goddess, when it’s scarce your fault?” He looped one arm familiarly around my waist, taking no notice of how I stiffened in return. “No, the same did happen to me with old Nolly’s daughter, too. She was as good as promised to me, with a dowry of twenty thousand pounds and a plum military appointment, but at the last I decided I couldn’t stomach the lady. She wanted Warwick’s grandson, anyway. It’s trade, sweet, not love. You should know that as well as I.”

I nodded, thinking of the dour young men my mother had tried to steer my way. “There’s no love in any of it. My mother wishes to marry me to some ugly old general or his son to repair
her
fortunes.”

“Exactly so,” he murmured, idly reaching out to stroke his finger across my cheek. “And precisely why we poor noble folk must steal love where we may. Which branch of that rotten old Villiers tree had the good fortune to drop you, my goddess?”

“My father was Lord Grandison,” I said, breathless from that tiny caress. “My mother is now wed to Lord Anglesea. She wishes I weren’t so old, and scarce wishes to admit me, for she prefers people to believe she’s still too young to have me for a daughter. But she
is
old, my lord. She paints her face. She thinks I don’t realize it, but I’ve seen her maid mixing the Venetian ceruse beside the ground cochineal in the morning.”

“My, my, but that’s damning,” he whispered, deftly turning me a fraction so that we were standing to one side of a tall, japanned cabinet, hidden from the sight of the others. With his fingertips, he turned my face upward, so all I could see was his handsome face with the moonlight behind it. “Ceruse and cochineal! May you never be so old as that, sweet.”

He kissed me then, which I’d been expecting, and thrust his tongue into my mouth, which I had not. Nor did I anticipate how swiftly he managed to disengage my breasts from my bodice for his handling, the air cool on my suddenly bare skin.

I should have done what I’d been taught and pushed him away. I was a noblewoman, a lady by birth. I was a
Villiers.
But as soon as my first shock passed at being so used by him, I realized I liked what he was doing. His tongue, his touch, gave me a startling pleasure, and the more I answered him back in kind, the more pleasure I felt.

“Ah, what a little minx you are,” he whispered roughly, now lavishing kisses on my throat and lower, to my breasts. “You’re a Villiers, aye, with sin bred into your blood.”

“What—what do you mean, my lord?” I stammered as I writhed against him, not really caring if he answered me or not, so long as he did not stop this rare delight.

“I mean that you’re made for love,” he said in a low, wicked whisper that delighted me as much as any caress. “You were made for me, goddess.”

In the room behind us, one of the men laughed with raucous, drunken enthusiasm. The sound was enough to remind me of the danger of what I was doing. It was not so much the act itself that worried me, but that I’d be caught and sent back to the country before I could meet Lord Chesterfield again.

I slipped free of him, as hard for him to grasp as a spring eel.

“No more, my lord,” I said, my words torn to a breathy whisper by my desire. “Not here.”

“Then tell me where, goddess,” he demanded. “Don’t leave me like this, perishing from want of your love and regard.”

His words came so earnest and fervent that I felt a heady rush of power, knowing I’d inspired such feelings in such a gentleman. I’d yet to cover my breasts, still shamelessly bare above my disheveled bodice, for I delighted in how he could not look away. He scarce knew me, yet already he loved me, and my own heart swelled in instant response.

Ah, ah, is there anything more foolish, or more eager to be broken, than the heart of a young maid?

“You must prove yourself to me, my lord,” I said breathlessly as I put my bodice back to rights. “Then—oh, then!—I’ll grant what you desire most.”

 
He pursued me with rare ardor for the rest of that year, with great protestations of devotion and loyalty whenever we met. He sent me posies tied with ribbons, and letters filled with fine poetry of his own device. Even when he was far away from London, tending to his estates in Derbyshire, he would make certain that he remained in my constant thoughts.

I forgot the wreath of other ladies’ hearts that he freely wore like some ancient victor, and blinded myself to any sense of calculation in how expertly he stirred my passions. I refused to consider that he might have selected me as a tool of vengeance upon my family, and against my cousin who had stolen his prize of Fairfax’s daughter. All I chose to comprehend was that the Earl of Chesterfield loved me, and I him, and because love had been a most rare commodity in my life, I believed him.

Before long I’d slipped my mother’s traces for an afternoon, and made the fateful journey across the town to his lodgings in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

“Almost there, my goddess.” Philip hurried me up the stairs to his lodgings, past the baleful watch of his landlady. I was beside myself with wine and excitement, and so stirred from the caresses he’d lavished upon me in the carriage that I was as tame as a hen who lays her own neck upon the chopping block.

As it was, I scarce waited for him to latch the door before I threw my arms around his shoulders, pressing my yearning young body against his.

“My dearest, dearest Philip,” I sighed, raining kisses across his face. “I would follow you anywhere, from farthest India to Africa’s burning sands!”

“All that I care is that you’ve followed me here, my fair goddess,” he said, his arms curling round my waist. “My own Barbara.”

He kissed me with such purposeful passion that it stole my breath, and he drew me close to his body so I could feel the steely length of his cock within his breeches. That should have been enough to warn me away—oh, most fearsome instrument of my ruin!—but he’d brought me along so well in his seduction over the last weeks that instead it only served to feed my desire. He pushed me back onto the bed and climbed atop me, giving me only a moment to accustom myself to the feel of a man’s weight and force.

There were no honey’d words now, no tender caresses. I’d let him come too far to retreat, even if I’d wished it. Instead he swiftly freed his cock from his breeches and shoved aside my petticoats, baring me to his attack. I’d a blurry awareness of the rough woolen of his breeches rubbing against the inside of my thighs and his fingers parting my quivering virgin flesh.

Mind you, I was but fifteen, and not nearly so worldly as I’d pretended to be. With no knowledge of a man’s strength or urgency at such times, I panicked and tried to wriggle backward across the bed. But he’d pinned me fairly with his knees on my skirts, and with three quick thrusts the thing was done, and he was buried deep within my poor little nest.

“So tight you are, my goddess,” he muttered, and groaned as he moved within me. “Fuck me now, Barbara, hard.”